Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

getlazarus.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 112 posts

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#21

Post by kriro »

Pascal always takes me down memory lane...to the very young me, family just got the first PC. I wrote the first "programs" in good old QBasic but that couldn't create executable files so I bought a random book on Pascal (yellow book, something with 7.0?) I saw in a store which came with a floppy that had a compiler (and thus allowed me to create the magical .exe files). Thinking about this makes me smile for multiple reasons (one of which is that back then for me computers were exclusively Microsoft OS based). The program that I wanted to write? A password protection for the new PC (loaded from autoexec). Highly insecure by design but I was pretty happy to get it working :P The other genius idea from that era was randomly outputting sound (length, frequency etc.). My young self figured that I only had to let the program run for a while until some cool sound effects would be found...well the result was rather unpleasant :D

One of the more enlightening moments of my early development as a programmer was looking at assembler output for Pascal vs. C. It never occurred to me before that C-style is just one way of doing it and I had assumed that parameters are always right to left because "that's how it is" :) [must have been around the time when the Phrack with "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" was released as that was when I got interested in assembly]

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#22

Post by lordfoom »

PvsNP_ZA wrote: post #4
moonshinefe wrote: post #2

Do people code in Pascal still?! I remember it from years ago in high school and it seemed like it was already ancient then. Nothing against the language itself, it was straightforward and easy to learn on. Just surprised to see a new compiler for it coming out.

In South Africa, Pascal and Delphi are still taught in schools... In fact, the University of South Africa actually has about 2 Delphi semester modules also, along with C++. Some schools have switched over to Java, and most other universities have jumped onto the Java/.NET bandwagon. So in a nutshell, I think it's still pretty prevalent in 3rd world countries. It's not a bad starting language to introduce students to…

Point of fact: the RSA department of education removed Java as the language being taught, and replaced it with Delphi, despite objections (from some like myself). Here's an article: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/columns/89295-is-delphi-better...

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#23

Post by gedrap »

Hexcles wrote: post #18

In China, Pascal is a very popular language for high school beginners of Olympiad in Informatics (see http://www.ioinformatics.org/ for the international competition). And it's probably the most used language in the provincial level competition, National Olympiad in Informatics in Province. Yet those who reach the national level will likely switch to C++ for many reasons (STL, performance, etc.). I myself started pro…

Same in Lithuania.

Everyone who intends to do a degree in computer science is taught Pascal, olympiads are in Pascal/C++.

Whether it's a good language to teach highschoolers (students in general, not preparing for olympiads) or not, I am not so sure. On one hand, yeah, it's pretty simple.

On other hand, I'd lean towards Python simply because it's more widespread in industry, as a result you have tons of well documented libraries for pretty much everything a highschooler will care about. Therefore, making it much easier to develop something useful, which results in higher motivation. And REPL, ipython notebooks are really neat for learning.

But that's the theory. In real life, you have loads of teachers who know only the very basics of Pascal and teaching them a new language might be... challenging (I've witnessed enough teachers struggling with basics of Pascal).

So all in all, it seems like Pascal is a reasonable option.

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#24

Post by SwellJoe »

Hexcles wrote: post #18

In China, Pascal is a very popular language for high school beginners of Olympiad in Informatics (see http://www.ioinformatics.org/ for the international competition). And it's probably the most used language in the provincial level competition, National Olympiad in Informatics in Province. Yet those who reach the national level will likely switch to C++ for many reasons (STL, performance, etc.). I myself started pro…

Pascal was the teaching language of choice in the US for a very long time. My high school AP (advanced classes that provided college credit) programming classes were taught with Pascal, after the introductory class using BASIC. But, I was in high school a long time ago, and programming was taught on Apple II computers (there were some IIe computers in the lab, as well). I don't think there's widespread Pascal usage for teaching in the US today, and I don't think I would campaign for bringing it back.

I'm not sure what took its place in high schools, now that I think of it, as I'm so far removed from it.

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#25

Post by jbb555 »

It's strange, the more new languages I learn, and the more complexity things like C++ acquire, the more I'm starting to feel like we lost something with simple straightforward languages like pascal and even C

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#27

Post by thiagoharry »

In Brazil, one of the big universities at the south of the country teaches Pascal as the first language in the Computer Science course. And we use the compiler Free Pascal there. The language is very didactic and still good to beginners. The fact that Pascal isn't widely used is counted as a bonus, because this will force you to learn another language as soon as you get approved in the subject that teaches programming and basic algorithms.

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#28

Post by sevensven »

I've been using Lazarus 2.6 for a free time project since August as I've used Delphi 1.0 in the early nineties and I wanted to see if this was any good.

I've been blow away with it, it's Delphi brought from the dead :)

It has been a real pleasure to use and I've come to appreciate the productivity that it brings, as this open source IDE is on par with what I remembered from early Delphi versions and, amazingly, I feel this is the cleanest way to target mac and linux GUI apps today (YMMV).

It's a shame that there is no support on SWIG for freepascal but it will get there eventually.

So, kudos to the freepascal and lazarus teams and thank you very, very much!

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#29

Post by icelancer »

SwellJoe wrote: post #24
Hexcles wrote: post #18

In China, Pascal is a very popular language for high school beginners of Olympiad in Informatics (see http://www.ioinformatics.org/ for the international competition). And it's probably the most used language in the provincial level competition, National Olympiad in Informatics in Province. Yet those who reach the national level will likely switch to C++ for many reasons (STL, performance, etc.). I myself started pro…

Pascal was the teaching language of choice in the US for a very long time. My high school AP (advanced classes that provided college credit) programming classes were taught with Pascal, after the introductory class using BASIC. But, I was in high school a long time ago, and programming was taught on Apple II computers (there were some IIe computers in the lab, as well). I don't think there's widespread Pascal usage f…

Pascal was on the way out when I was in HS (I'm 32) but it was still kicking in the form of Delphi during the VB wars (then VB4). I have fond memories of it.

It's mostly Java now, BTW.

Re: Free Pascal Compiler Version 3.0.0

#30

Post by welfare »

kriro wrote: post #21

Pascal always takes me down memory lane...to the very young me, family just got the first PC. I wrote the first "programs" in good old QBasic but that couldn't create executable files so I bought a random book on Pascal (yellow book, something with 7.0?) I saw in a store which came with a floppy that had a compiler (and thus allowed me to create the magical .exe files). Thinking about this makes me smile for multiple…

I have almost exactly the same memories of Pascal. Being a kid tinkering with QBasic (and later QuickBasic that also created the mystical executables).

It was when I started tinkering with computer graphics I realized that QBasic was not that performant and stumbled upon Pascal. It was in Borland Pascal I first learned about pointers, vectors, memory management etc.

Post reply on HN